Monthly Archives: April 2010

Had he lived, today 30 April 2010 would have been the 90th birthday of my uncle Fran, after whom I take my middle name. He had hardly left school when he volunteered, unknown to his family, in 1939 to join … Continue reading →

I sat out in the sun by the river today. It’s been warm, and almost like summer. One of the female ducks (duchesses?) came down the river, and swung off the main flow and turned about and heaved to near … Continue reading →

Smokers and their supporters spend quite a lot of time looking closely at antismoking science over the past century, and picking it apart. The two books I advertise in the right margin – Velvet Glove, Iron Fist, and Smokescreens – … Continue reading →

“There is no such thing as society,” Margaret Thatcher once famously said. “There are only men, women, and families”. And that might be taken as one extreme view of rugged individualism (isn’t a family a society, though?). The Libertarian concept … Continue reading →

We live in a time of decay and corruption. Antismoking science is corrupt science. And it gets more and more corrupt with every passing year. A lot of people think that the corruption began in the 1970s with the invention … Continue reading →

Dick Puddlecote in comments has drawn my attention to the BNP manifesto: "The BNP will take legislative steps to protect Britain’s pubs, which will include tax concessions, smoking rooms under strict supervision and a lowering of tax on alcohol served … Continue reading →

A few days ago I was writing about Libertarianism and liberty. I said that human beings have to work to survive. There is, at any one time, some minimal amount of work they have to do in order to live … Continue reading →

A few days ago I was writing about Libertarianism and liberty. I said that human beings have to work to survive. There is, at any one time, some minimal amount of work they have to do in order to live … Continue reading →